Taking Teaching Outside

Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Deborah Jackson takes her teaching way outside the traditional classroom.

In 2012, she received funding from a Canadian Studies Faculty Enrichment Grant and enhanced an existing course, “The Cultural Politics of Environment: Great Lakes Region.” Recently, she has taken students on research trips to main environmental "hot spots" along the St. Clair Channel between Michigan and southwest Ontario: Sarnia, Aamjiwnaang First Nation, and Windsor on the Canadian side; and Marine City (St. Clair County) and Southwest Detroit on the U.S. side.

Jackson has been conducting research for more than two decades in the Great Lakes region, mostly focused on indigenous peoples. Another project analyzes the effects of oil extraction in Alberta's Tar Sands region on First Nations communities living downstream. Her study of communities of Canada’s “Chemical Valley,” an area of the upper Great Lakes, has led to several publications.

Her earlier investigations of the lives and culture of Native Americans and First Nations people in urban locations led to a book: Our Elders Lived It: American Indian Identity in the City (Northern Illinois University Press, 2002).

Jackson also teaches in the Human Development and Social Relations program. Students she has mentored have presented their research at academic conferences.

Deborah Jackson, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology

Earlham College, an independent, residential college, aspires to provide the highest-quality undergraduate education in the liberal arts, including the sciences, shaped by the distinctive perspectives of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).